Private Paris (Private 10)

“One of my favorite areas in Paris,” Herbert said. “We could go there for drinks, and maybe something to eat?”

“Perfect,” I said.

Chapter 28

4th Arrondissement

5:20 p.m.

LOUIS TOOK US to a café on the Rue des Archives.

The art professor looked around and said, “Louis, there are much more sympathetic places to entertain Jack in the Marais.”

“This is true, Michele,” the big bear of a man said, taking a seat outdoors. “But we are mixing business with pleasure.”

“Does it have to do with the tag?” she asked.

“It’s a missing persons case,” I said.

“Well, sort of,” Louis said. “This person wants to be missing.”

“Who is this person?” Herbert asked.

“The granddaughter of a client of mine back in Los Angeles,” I said.

“So, she is a runaway?”

“Not like a teen runaway. But she’s trying to escape something or someone and we don’t know why, other than knowing that drugs are involved.”

“And you think she’s here somewhere?” the artist asked, looking around.

Louis pointed across the street and said, “At eleven o’clock this morning, she withdrew five hundred euros from an ATM machine in that pharmacy. Twenty minutes later, she used a debit card to pay for a haircut in that salon. She also bought wine at that shop over there. And forty minutes ago, she returned to get more money from the pharmacy ATM.”

The artist grew excited and said, “We are on the stakeout, yes?”

“Something like that,” Louis said.

“I feel like I am in a film noir,” she said, beaming at the idea.

“Nothing that thrilling,” I said, flashing on the car chase and shoot-out from the night before and wondering just how much we should tell her.

A waitress came. Louis ordered a bottle of Pouilly-Fuissé. It soon arrived and was chilled perfectly. There was a warm breeze as Michele described the neighborhood. First settled in the 1200s, Le Marais—the marsh—was one of the oldest districts in the city. During the Renaissance, it was the preferred neighborhood of noblemen. Jews had lived there for centuries. The Chinese came after World War I, and the gays more recently.

“Many galleries in Paris are here,” she said. “Nice restaurants too.”

“Do you have pieces in them? The galleries?”

“I do,” she said. “I can show you some later.”

The conversation drifted to discussions of Paris and Los Angeles. Time seemed to disappear as we chatted and laughed. The artist had a semi-humorous take on nearly everything, and after a while I became less flabbergasted by her looks than I was by her mind, which could be cutting or playful. Again and again, I heard this voice in my head saying that I’d never met a woman like Michele Herbert.

“So,” she said at one point. “Are you in love, Jack?”

I startled and glanced over at Louis, but was surprised to find him not there. I’d been so engrossed in my conversation that I hadn’t heard or seen him get up.

“Jack?”

“I’m in love with life,” I said.